1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a computer program product, a communication quality estimation method, an information processing apparatus, and a communication quality estimation system.
2. Description of the Related Art
Transmission systems such as conference systems in which a teleconference is held through a network such as the Internet have spread. Such a transmission system enables a communication with a remote location as if the communication is an actual communication in person.
For example, according to such a conference system, a terminal that a first participant in the teleconference uses takes an image of the first participant and collects the voice such as a speech of the first participant. Then, the terminal encodes and transmits the image and voice to a terminal that a second participant in the teleconference uses. Subsequently, the terminal that the second participant uses receives and decodes the encoded image and voice. Then, the terminal displays the decoded image and outputs the decoded voice. This implements the teleconference.
By the way, the communication implemented in such a transmission system depends on the communication situation that occurs on the network. Thus, for example, Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2005-064981 discloses a technique in which a terminal calculates the information about the line operating condition in accordance with at least one of the packet round-trip time and the rate of packet loss, and then informs the user of the line operating condition by displaying the information.
However, the conventional technique described above recognizes the communication quality when the user uses the transmission system by actually communicating with another user after the transmission system is introduced. It may be impossible in the conventional technique to recognize the communication quality when the user uses the transmission system before the transmission system is introduced.
Especially, there are large fluctuations in transfer rate of the transmission system described above because real-time transmission and reception of a large amount of data such as an image and voice is required in the transmission system. This makes it difficult to estimate the communication quality when the user uses the transmission system without performing communication in the transmission system.
In light of the foregoing, there is a need to provide a computer program product, a communication quality estimation method, an information processing apparatus, and a communication quality estimation system that can estimate the communication quality of the transmission system without performing a communication with another user in the transmission system.